This past weekend was the Real Food Festival in Maleny. Last year I volunteered both days and one day was a double shift without one minute for lunch or even a cup of tea. I decided that this year I needed to go to the festival and enjoy myself and that’s just what I did.

The first event was my chef/hero Cameron Matthews, head chef and manager at The Long Apron restaurant at Spicer’s Clovelly Estate in Montville. You might remember that my sister and I attended Cameron’s Italian cooking class last year. We’ve seen each other around and his wife Leanne is a brilliant food stylist and she did a presentation at the same photo workshop I did last year.

The truth is, this guy can cook. He’s studied, practiced, studied some more, learned from brilliant chefs and cooks and then practiced some more. He’s not full of himself and the best bit is how funny he is. I think he’d be brilliant with his own TV show. Great food and a lot of laughs – my kind of food TV.

Cameron shared the stage with Kacey Walker, owner of Walker Farm Foods where they raise dairy cows, free range chickens and free range eggs. Kacey brought a chicken that looked just like this one because I bought this just after the show. It’s the size of a small turkey but it’s not an old bird. My chicken ate grass and bugs and ran around and had a nurturing life at the Walkers and that makes me very happy. Cameron showed us how to make a chicken ballotine or a stuffed chicken leg and thigh and he served it with a mushroom sauce.

These chickens are a lot more expensive than what I can buy in the grocery store but the taste is no comparison whatsoever. This chicken tastes like well… chicken. It’s full of flavor and there’s enough meat on one bird for John and I to have 5 meals and they aren’t leftover meals. To start with, I boned the chicken. Yeah, that wing tip ended up with Charlie but the stock won’t suffer too badly. He was very happy.

Then I followed Cameron’s instructions on how to bone a chicken thigh and leg and stuff it with sausage. I’ll admit that he did it much better than I did and his knife was WAY sharper than mine was. I think it’s time to visit the knife sharpener. Still, I got the job done. Watch the video and for this recipe, you’d pull that leg bone right out. No lollypop.

You can stuff the chicken with just about anything you like. I stuffed mine with sausage, poking the sausage meat down the hole where the leg bone used to live. I wrapped the whole thing up in cling film and used twisty ties at both ends. I gently poached the chicken roll for about 20 minutes and then heated the oven to 200C and roasted it until the skin turned golden brown.

While it was roasting I sauteed some mushrooms in some butter and then added some chicken stock and cooked that down and then added cream. When it looked thick enough for sauce I whizzed it with a stick blender.

After a few minutes of resting the chicken, I sliced it and served it with the best potatoes I’ve cooked in a long time. I’ll share those next time.

This is the first use of the chicken. Next I made chicken stock with the carcass and then chicken soup. John’s dad is coming for lunch tomorrow and he’ll love it. We’ll serve some of those brioche rolls with it too.